Miller Blog

Thursday, December 5, 2013

3-D Printing: On the Verge of Something Really Big

I am fascinated with 3-D printing.

In 2004, The NMC: The New Media
Consortium created its first edition of its signature publication, The
Horizon Report. I was fortunate
enough to have been a member of that publication’s editorial panel and can
clearly recall the discussion we had around RAPID PROTOTYPING – a technology we
now think of as 3-D printing. The panel
recognized that a growing number of colleges and

universities were
experimenting with rapid prototyping for fast and cost-efficient creation of
models and parts. The 2004 Horizon Report projected that the
availability of 3-D printers would spread once the price of the units came
done.

The recently published 2014 Horizon Report identifies 3D printing as a “Technology to Watch”
with a time-to-adoption projection of two to three years. It describes the technology this way:

Known in industrial circles as rapid prototyping, 3D printing
refers to technologies that construct physical objects from three-dimensional
(3D) digital content such as 3D modeling software, computer-aided design (CAD)
tools, computer-aided tomography (CAT), and X-ray crystallography. A 3D printer
builds a tangible model or prototype from the electronic file, one layer at a
time, through an extrusion-like process using plastics and other flexible
materials, or an inkjet-like process to spray a bonding agent onto a very thin layer
of fixable powder. The deposits created by the machine can be applied very
accurately to build an object from the bottom up, layer by layer, with
resolutions that, even in the least expensive machines, are more than
sufficient to express a large amount of detail. The process even accommodates
moving parts within the object. Using different materials and bonding agents,
color can be applied, and parts can be rendered in plastic, resin, or metal.
This technology is commonly used in manufacturing to build prototypes of almost
any object (scaled to fit the printer, of course) that can be conveyed in three
dimensions.

Ten years later, the current NMC panel is even more
enthusiastic about the technology. And,
there are scads

of examples of how it is being used regularly in educational
settings – both formal and informal.

I can affirm that this technology is here now – at least in
Chattanooga. The Chattanooga Public Library 4th floor has
a 3-D printer that is available for use to members of the public. I used this device to make my first 3-D
object – a very small figure of Totoro, the iconic

anime character. They have since added a second printer with
the capacity to produce larger objects.
You can read a story - The
Boundless Possibilities of 3-D Printing - on how Chattanooga has embraced 3-D printing
in Nooga.com,
a local news website focusing on business, government and lifestyle in the
Chattanooga area.

You should also read a recent article in Campus Technology,
one of my favorite publications - Print
Your Own 3D Learning Objects. The
article describes how faculty and students at the University
of North Georgia are using 3D printing to create low-cost orthotics and
assistive devices for disabled children and other applications of this “disruptive
technology.” This article also provides some resources for those interested in learning
more about 3-D printing in education.